Had another country had a primary role in inventing the internet, they would probably have it (or more likely, the US would be .gov.us and everyone else would be whatever they are today).
I don’t understand this argument. Are you saying the internet should be organised in a way that benefits the US, even if it is confusing for people in other countries? By your reasoning, it would make sense for .com to be US-exclusive because the US had a primary role in inventing the internet. Let’s pause to ask ourselves “what is an actually good system?” instead of “how can we justify US privilege?”.
Other countries could create their gTLD as they see fit: .gouv, .ukgov, etc.
They instead prefer using a SLD (like .gouv.fr) because they’re complete owner of their ccTLD. ccTLDs are not affiliated in anyway with ICANN. I’m guessing .gov is a special case nowadays, and probably considered like a ccTLD from the ICANN point of view, I’ll have to look into it
Edit: it seems like gov is considered as a Sponsored TLD[1] (sTLD). Not sure what it implies.
While its true there is still a relationship back to ICANN for ccTLDs, politically it would be a shitstorm of epic proportions if the US/ICANN interfered in the administration of ccTLDs - most countries (understandably!) see their ccTLD as an increasingly sovereign thing that is naturally owned by the State, not the registrars or domain name registration system.
While it might be technically possible for ICANN to make certain adjustments to the ccTLD system or the registration requirements, politically its much much harder and gets harder still with time. Imagine the response from most soverign states etc if their own ccTLD was meddled with in a manner they didn't appreciate.
ICANN has slowly tried to move more and more of the ccTLD stuff to international working groups ("Governmental Advisory Committee") to put clean air between the US and ccTLDs, but the link is still there:
